ohai

I realize it's been over a year since the last post here. Dear readers, I apologize to you both.

I hope to add posts on a more regular basis, now that we've got internet at home. Technology is like Pringles: once you pop it, you can't stop it. You're whipped on the things you can do with being wired, and the idea of doing without isn't just uncomfortable - it's downright cataclysmic.

You're like this, I'm like this. Now let's get on with our precarious lives.

But first...the truth about cat videos:

Earworm My Eye

I met up with an old high-school buddy a couple weeks ago; it was great catching up with him, meeting his partner, and generally shooting the breeze. When it came time to go home, they offered me a ride - sounds good. We hopped into the Mercedes and room-a-zoom-zoom we were off.

The radio was tuned to some '80s station. There was Faith No More, Men Without Hats (no joke)...

...and then it happened:

And so, for the next two weeks, the damn thing kept playing in my head.

It. Would. Not. Leave. I have classes to prep for, syllabi to write. It's there, too-rye-aying right between my ears. That's bad enough. But it gets worse, much worse. I go to work at some warehouse or print shop, doomed to another full day of repetitive tasks - grab bundle, put on pallet, grab bundle, put on pallet, lather rinse repeat - which means there's nothing to think about. Except for that song.

It's 3:30am. The cats are braying for their breakfast. And Dexy's Midnight Runners are too-rye-aying for the umpteen-fuckin'-zillionth time. It really was driving me crazy, almost as bad as the cats themselves.

My wife told me about a kid in her high school who, whenever you said there was a song stuck in your head, would immediately burst into "That's What Friends Are For" - fighting fire with fire.

It didn't work.

You've got to understand, this thing was taking up way too much mental space - and there's not that much to begin with. It was my arch-nemesis, the Khan to my Kirk.



Maybe you feel my pain. Or maybe you don't. And that makes me feel sad, because when you hurt, there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of spreading the pain around to everyone imaginable. You've got to understand, I want to share with you.

There, y'feelin' it now? Do you feel my pain?

I can't hear you!Louder!!!

Sing it with me!

All together now!

Now don't you feel better?

That's what I had to bear for two weeks straight - morning, noon, and night.

Well, it finally happened. I got it out of my head. You know what's there now?

How Not to Kill a Fucking Rat

I realize I've been away for a while, but this was something I had to post.

My wife and I are lying in bed the other evening, just switched out the light, when we hear something: a faint, intermittent watery-type sound from the bathroom. Did we leave the sink on? (One of our cats likes to drink from the faucet, and we like to humor him.) No, it sounds more like a little kid playing in the bathtub. What the heck?

I get up and turn on the bathroom light - nothing unusual to see. But the sound's coming from the toilet - a leak? Doesn't sound like any leak I've heard before. Better see what's going on in the bowl. I'll have to raise the seat and take a lo--

FUCK! RAT! FUCKING RAT!

That's right, a fucking rat is doing the breaststroke. In our toilet.

What do you do? Flush. Unfortunately it doesn't work. I try again - nothing. Damn.

My wife doesn't want me messing with rats. Rats are filthy critters, and they can bite. I don't want to mess with it either, frankly. So what then? She calls a friend who's worked with lab rats - great, except this person lives in Baltimore, and it's 1:30am there. Naturally there's no answer.

I could sic our fearless cats on it - just let them into the bathroom, lift the toilet lid, and run out of there. But no, my wife will have nothing of it. If I could get bitten, so could the cats, and any medical bill is simply out of our tax bracket right now.

Now what? We decide to call the landlady; it's late, but better than trying to sleep with a fucking rat in the toilet. Pick up the phone, dial the number - she picks up!

Me: Hi, sorry for bothering at this hour, but you'll never guess what happened...

Landlady: What?

Me: Well, um, there's a fucking rat in the toilet.

Landlady: You're kidding!

Me: Nope. Swam up the pipe, and now it's stuck...What do we do? [As if this happened all the time!]

Landlady: Well, you could get something like a bowl and a cover for it, and catch it. That way you can take it outside and let it go...

Pause here for a second. Understand, I like my landlady. She's a decent person, not strictly business and piss off if it's not business; no, she's friendly, caring. She'll buy organic cleaning products, she'll sort her trash, she won't fuss about the rent. But here methinks the landlady careth too much.

Me: Um, I don't think that's an option.

Landlady: Or I could just come over.

OK, pop quiz - what's the most appropriate response to this offer? That's right, "See you in two minutes! I'll make coffee." But do I say this? Nooooooo...

Me: Well, we'll see what we can do. If we need you, we'll call you.

Landlady: OK, sounds fine.

Now my wife has heard the conversation, or most of it. What she did hear was the fucking rat-catching business; what she didn't hear was the offer that followed. Whereas I assumed she'd heard the whole thing, so I say nothing about this offer. And my mind kicks into full fight-or-flight mode.

The funny thing about the fight-or-flight mechanism is how it hijacks your organism while leaving you with the bill; it doesn't matter what the reality of the situation is, but how you interpret it. And when the adrenaline's rushing through you, you simply don't ask questions because this is not the time to be dithering - there's something threatening out there, dammit! So options that would normally be visible to a sane human being get closed off. But - and here's the catch - you're still responsible.

Another thing: the tunnel-vision effect. When in the throes of fight-or-flight passion, implications are slow in the formation. What you see doesn't make sense for a while, you only care if you achieved your goal. It's only when the adrenaline wears off that all the ramifications flood into your mind.

My wife is naturally not keen on me catching any rats, and I've already taken on the duty of handling this situation. There's only one option left to my throbbing brain: kill the fucker. But how?

I look around the apartment for something that looks like it could deliver a lethal blow to a toilet-swimming fucking rat. A broom? - Too long. The toilet brush? - Too light, it'd just bounce off 'im. Plunger? - Oh yeah, we don't have one.

I do have these poles about 3' long that I've been saving. We bought some baker's racks, but some of the support poles weren't machined properly; this meant replacing all of them. I can't swing them in the bathroom, but I can thrust it into the toilet, St. George-style, and mash the fucking rat. It's got a rubber tip, originally for padding on floors, now for cushioning the blow slightly. It won't scratch the toilet if I miss.

My trusty weapon in hand. No fucking rat is safe.

So I take the pole into the bathroom and formulate a plan. Then I steel myself. OK, ready: One, two, three. I flush the toilet to immobilize the fucking rat, then quick-open the lid and *BAM* deliver the lethal blow. The fucking rat doesn't know what hit him until it's too late. It doesn't move.

The toilet is empty of water now: I'd flushed. So where's this water coming from, and why's it going all over the bathroom floor? I don't understand.

Then I see, and I understand. There's a hole in the bottom of the toilet, right under the fucking rat. I see the one by the other just long enough for the fucking rat carcass to hang on the edge, like that final putt at the end of Caddyshack, and then fall in. There is now a fucking rat carcass on the floor of our bathroom, surrounded on all sides by porcelain. And there's water all over the floor.

I have just slain a fucking rat and a fucking toilet. Great. Just fucking great.

The aftermath. Note that the toilet is not in our bathroom when this picture was taken, but in the driveway. We do not go to the bathroom in the driveway.

I mop up, clean off, and go to bed. But I don't sleep very well.

The cats wake me up at 5 am for breakfast, and I have to pee. This is not happening. I put some clothes on and go out for a walk in the rain. Nope, the corner Starbucks isn't open. I keep walking toward the park. On my way back home I see Starbucks has opened, but by then it's already too late.

We arrange to have a plumber come in and replace the toilet in the afternoon. The guy comes, he's a good fellow. One hour and $417 later, we can pee in our own home again.

What I Learned From My Experience

Now I'm a teacher by profession. There are at least three things to learn from all this:

Lesson #1: Toilets are not indestructible. You know this only from the movies, not usually from real life. The worst we hit a toilet with is pee and poo, which even apes know are relatively soft. But toilets - they are heavy and solid, so it's natural to think they're tough. Right? Wrong.

Let's calculate the force of that lethal blow. Now the steel bar weighs about 2 pounds, and it's 7/8 of an inch thick. I'd guess it took all of 0.1 second to ram that fucker into the toilet, and it might have traveled about 12 inches.

Now acceleration = (vf - vi)/t, so the pole accelerated at a rate of 2 feet per second^2. If F = ma, then

(2 lb of steel x 10 ft per second^2) = 200 foot-pounds per second^2

At the moment of impact, which probably lasted about 1/100 of a second, all that force was transferred to the toilet bowl - that makes 2000 foot-pounds. Convert that to inches for the next step, so 24000 inch-pounds.

Since it was delivered entirely through the end of the pole, whose area is 1.373"in^2, the amount of force would be 24000 inch-pounds per in^2 / 0.73 inch= almost 17500 PSI.

Between the steel pole and the vitreous china, it's clear which one would break. The tensile strength of steel is 40000 PSI, whereas that of of vitreous china is only 4000-800 kgf/cm^2, or 5600-11200 PSI, far lower than the steel bar - even when cushioned by the rubber tip and the fucking rat carcass.

Let me reiterate that:

(2 lb of steel x 10 ft per second^2) x 0.01 sec
= 200 foot-pounds of force

Now, just for hypothetical purposes, let's replace the steel bar with the equivalent of poo:

(2 lb of poo x 10 ft per second^2) x 0.01 sec
= 200 foot-pounds of *splat*

Enough said. I don't know the tensile strength of poo, but I expect this would be the result. Which leads us to...

Lesson #2: Toilets make lousy fucking rat traps. There are several reasons why they are unfeasible options for destroying the fucking rat problem:

1. Fucking rats very rarely come up the pipe.

2. Toilet fucking rat traps rely on someone doing guard duty. And who wants to stand around waiting for a fucking rat to come up the pipe?

3. They are not idiot-proof.

4. They break rather easily, as shown above.

5. They're expensive to buy and install.

But perhaps this is too abstract for you. Let's take a concrete example, like New York City. Even at a conservative estimate, we'd have to use up 44 million toilets to rid the city of its fucking rats. This adds up to a cost of 44 million man-hours (not including travel time and loading) and $18.3 billion. Even the Pentagon would pass on that offer - and we haven't even considered the baby fucking rats that get left behind and grow up.

This leads us to...

Lesson #3: If you find a fucking rat in your toilet, call the landlady. Don't wait for her to invite herself over, just get her to come by. And don't forget to make coffee.

Death by Asteroid. Really.

A panel of 41 scientists has concluded that the dinosaurs were killed off by a giant asteroid, Deep-Impact style. This is apparently "the only plausible explanation", even though it contradicts Gary Larson's hypothesis that the real cause may be attributed to cigarettes. No doubt the verdict will be appealed.

Transferable Skills Are Made, Not Born

This is for all you job-hunting philosophy students out there. I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing. Hey you! Yeah, you - the one by the white sedan! Let me give some unsolicited advice, to you and to myself: make a conscious effort to extend the range of your abilities. You can, though it might take work.

In the course of my groundless floating (i.e. surfing the Internet), I ran across an interesting bit which prompted this post. It's not even remotely original, but in a volatile job market that practically demands career changes, the lesson is worth reiterating.

When job hunting, you may have to consider positions you haven't been trained for. If you've been trained in (ahem) philosophy, you've educated yourself into a corner (now really, besides universities, how many places hire professional philosophers?) unless you make the effort to apply all those skills you learned in new situations.

This transferability doesn't come automatically. That the skills of philosophical training must be listed is evidence that those very same skills are neither obvious nor obviously transferable.

In fact, I'm tempted to say that every skill requires effort to extend. Case in point: in an FBI study on attackers of police officers it was found, among other things, that a number of incidents could have been avoided by those officers. Many assailants carry concealed weapons which ought to have been detected but weren't.

An irony...is that officers who are assigned to look for concealed weapons, while working off-duty security at night clubs for instance, are often highly proficient at detecting them. "But then when they go back to the street without that specific assignment, they seem to 'turn off' that skill," and thus are startled--sometimes fatally--when a suspect suddenly produces a weapon and attacks.

In other words, cops who get good at spotting hidden arms while moonlighting don't necessarily carry that skill over to their day job. It's the exact same action, only the context is different, namely the role of a police officer. Understand that I am neither blaming nor excusing the victims for their injury, only pointing up a fact. We're all prone to similar oversights.

But should we acquiesce to the facts? Shall we throw up our arms and leave our status quo of abilities be? No: what we should do is beware of our tendency to let habits ossify - and determine where we can put Skill X to good use. This transfer of skills is precisely what's needed in order to get a job when you have to switch gears.

Now the more specialized you get, the more deliberate the transfer must be. Otherwise how can you explain the stupid things philosophers sometimes do? Some plagiarize, others cheat on their spouses, still others set themselves up as experts on 9/11. Philosophers aren't the only idiots; I am simply saying that their abilities, which can apply to many situations, do not do so of their own accord.

I may well be revealing more about myself than about philosophers in general, but it seems to me we've got our blind spots like anyone else. I think our blind spot tends to be an undue pride in our intellectual abilities: we think we're hot shit, that we can do anything simply because we've studied this abstract, complicated thing. C.S. Peirce voiced this criticism over a century ago, and it remains true today; it doesn't seem profound, but that's only because we don't appreciate how needful it was to say it.

We must make an effort to apply our skills appropriately. This means observing the field - where we'll be doing our critical thinking, for example. It means not only analyzing that field and case studies, but also imagining ourselves in various situations: how, O Great Spinozist, how do you teach English to a dozen kids in your class when they've already sat through a full day of school? what book do you find that advice in - and how do you know you'll do it right (assuming it's good advice)? You might have a leg up on, say, a ditch-digger or an air-traffic controller, but it's not always evident.

So. How can we help ourselves make that shift of skills? I'd like to whip up some ways to do that. But, my friends, that's another post.

(Image thoughtfully pilfered from here on Student Work in Photography, Drawing, and Graphic Design)

A Volitionist Argument for the Assurance of Salvation

Agent Intellect has a very interesting post comparing the idea of salvation as manifested in Islam and Christianity. He argues that since Allah is irreducibly capricious, Muslims can only hope that they will be found worthy in His eyes; a righteous man therefore could be damned if Allah decided it should be so. Christianity's promise, on the other hand, assures that God can, does, and must allow any righteous follower. This is a heavy claim, even without the comparison.

What has always puzzled me is the idea that we can know any limitations to God's nature. After all, if God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why couldn't He perform the impossible? Why couldn't He create a rock that He could not lift? By extension, why couldn't God go back on His word? This is a well-known argument against Christianity: any limitations to God lead to self-contradictory conclusions, and so Christianity is absurd. If that is the case, then Islam presents the only logical conception of God - a Supreme Being who can change His mind in an instant, even deceive us whimsically.

I believe St. Paul supplies a response to this charge. My contention is that the impossibility of a lying God exists and is perfectly logical, but that it still rests on His will. Far from being a limitation, this evidences God's love for us. First we have to trace the nature of this impossibility, and then we can draw out the implications.

Understand that I am not arguing that God exists here. In the following argument

If the Bible is true, God is real and He spoke to Abraham.
If God had this conversation with Abraham, He could not lie.
Therefore if the Bible is true, God did not lie to Abraham.

this post addresses only Premiss #2. Nor am I arguing for theological voluntarism necessarily (!), though this could be regarded as supportive of that position. For the moment I'm simply unpacking this question and offering an account.

Agent Intellect cites several verses supporting the thesis that God cannot lie, but the only one which says it is impossible for God to lie is Heb. 6.18. What's interesting is that He does so purely out of volition, which is confirmed by verses 13-15. God made the promise to Abraham, which really was not necessary; nobody forced Him to make the promise. The force of necessity comes in thanks to (1) the nature of promises and (2) the absolute nature of God, not in His willing to make the promise. Because a promise involves swearing by something higher than oneself, God was compelled to appeal to a higher authority. But since God is the highest authority around, He could only swear by Himself. That's what makes the Law what it is. In other words, in the act of promising, God transmuted His word from actuality to necessity; it became binding because He willed it.

Thus prior to the Covenant there was no necessity behind God's word; it was merely actually so. We can then say He did not lie, though He very well could have. Therefore the necessity mentioned in Hebrews 6.18 rests ultimately on God's decision to make the promise to Abraham. In other words, God created His own necessity.

Does that mean we're supposed to take God's word for it? He cannot lie because He said so...? That's like the ultimate used-car salesman: "Trust me." Let's compare the two cases. The used-car salesman wants to be trusted, but we know there are greater sources of truth than his snake-oil testimony. We can have the car tested and see whether there's any truth in the claim. In the case of God, however, we have no higher authority to appeal to. Assuming that God is real, He is the final arbiter on all matters and therefore the ultimate assurance for a promise - even His own.

The consistency of God's nature manifests itself in His love for us. This is evidenced by the fact that He makes himself trustworthy, as the Covenant demonstrates. Out of the very nature which created the world, God literally creates necessity by binding His word with Himself. He could deceive us, but He doesn't; instead he holds Himself to his word, which is by definition superlative in power and authority.

This rendition comes with an interesting twist: since God's word ought to be binding because it is so, it appears to fall prey to the Naturalistic Fallacy - and yet does not. The reason for this is that the Naturalistic Fallacy depends on immanent conceptions of modality. The domain of philosophy is the world around us, and we try to explain things in terms that anybody could examine. In other words, we cannot explain how necessity of any kind may be derived from actuality in terms of the everyday world. This is true. But God by definition transcends the universe, and therefore its laws do not necessarily apply. In this case alone can we derive an ought from an is. This argument therefore provides a valid speculative link between the immanent and transcendent.

This conception of God seems most consistent with His nature. See Genesis 1.3 or John 1.1: things happen on the basis of God's speaking, and they occur as commanded. I am not arguing from the authority of these verses, I am citing them as evidence of sacred consistency. (My argument for the basis of Christian assurance rests on Scripture, but only to the extent that it asserts the reality of God. Even if we leave the question mark of God standing, the argument remains valid.) The world came into being: none of this had to be, it simply was the case. The complexity of the universe is certainly fascinating, but so what? That doesn't make me go "Wow!" It could be more complex. Big deal. No, it is the world's very contingency which makes it so astonishing - that it exists at all.

So it seems that Paul sheds light on the loving nature of God by explaining why He cannot lie: the will to be true to His word, which only makes sense because of care. God cannot lie because He cares enough for us to make a promise. Hopefully I've got it right, but I could well be wrong.

Musique du Jour

Grouper, "Hold the Way."

Maya Deren dances with David Lynch.

A Thought - Awards in Architecture

It seems to me that architectural designs should not be given awards until they've been up for at least fifty years.

1. Buildings are meant to be used, meaning people must live and work in them. If they cannot be used comfortably, they cannot be called good, no matter how pretty they look. What good is a kitchen with countertops only three inches deep? You can't do much with it. What is the point of staircases three inches wide? Ferrets could use it, but who's designing building for ferrets? Buildings are designed around human actions, so they have to be designed in human proportions.

2. Corollary of #1: buildings are not meant to be repaired more than necessary. Fixing a building costs time and money, and it cuts into the everyday workings of the people using the building. Water needs to be shut off sometimes, areas are blocked off, and so on. For regular maintenance this can't be helped, and should be tolerated in the interest of preserving the building. Structural defects are not necessary, they are errors in the design itself and are therefore avoidable. (I'm thinking about the Portland Building fiasco, an avoidable architectural flower of evil. I don't include Portlandia, a sculptural gem.)

3. Neither the use nor the soundness of a building really can be seen right away. This is because we don't always know how people will respond to the building, and an architectural blueprint is extremely complex - flaws won't announce themselves. What looks good on paper, then, might not actually work in practice. But that wouldn't be due to a disconnect between theory and practice; rather, it would evidence an error in knowledge of principles. (See Immanuel Kant, On the Old Saw: That Might Be True in Theory, But It Won't Work in Practice. For the full text, listen here. Kant's talking about human affairs in general, so it applies to my argument too.)

4. Therefore we should hold off on any special awards for architectural designs for a sufficient length of time - fifty years, I'd say. Candidates could be chosen after half a century, or slated for monitoring that long. Costs for utilities, repairs, and maintenance would be logged up; those costs would yield post-construction rate by which to gauge the building. Detailed surveys could be taken every five years, finding the opinion of tenants of the building concerning its user-friendliness, adaptivity, visual appeal, etc. All this information would be brought to the table along with the blueprints for judging. This would do architecture more justice as a field by evaluating cases on the merits which fit the intent of the field, thus reducing the total amount of crow that needs to be eaten.

Discuss.
(Images haplessly horked from Design Language Etc. and Great Buildings.com *har*.)

Jan Tschichold on Typography, Learning,...and Agapé

"In a pathological pursuit of things different, the reasonable proportions of paper size, like so many other qualities, have been banished by some to the disadvantage of the solitary and defenseless reader. There was a time when deviations from the truly beautiful page proportions 2:3, 1:√ 3 , and the Golden Section were rare. Many books produced between 1550 and 1770 show these proportions exactly, to within half a millimetre.

"To learn this, one has to examine old books thoroughly. Alas, almost no one does this any more, yet the benefits of such study are imeasurable. Schools of typography, in cooperation with libraries of old books, need to undertake two things: first, a detailed inspection of old books, and second, in support of this, permanent as well as changing exhibitions of these old treasures. An admiringly superficial look at a particularly beautiful set of pages or title pages only is not sufficient. One has to be able to touch these books and carefully study their typographical structure page by page. Even old books whose content is no longer relevant can serve this purpose. It is true, we are born with our eyes, but they will only open slowly to beauty, much more slowly than one thinks. Nor is it simple to find a knowledgeable person one could ask for guidance. Frequently, a general educational background is lacking, even in the teacher.

"Around 1930 a teacher of fine arts was outraged by the fact that a typographer was expected to know his way around in the history of script of the past two thousand years. By the way, demands in those days were more moderate than they are today. If we were to disregard such standards altogether, however, we would return to barbarism. He who no longer understands what he is doing is becoming as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."

--"The Importance of Tradition in Typography". The Form of the Book, p. 27-8.
(Image recklessly lifted from Linotype.com)

Brian Eno on Belgians

"I notice two things about Belgians. First, they only get wild with their spectacle frames - Belgian spectacles are spectacular - second, they seem almost universally tainted (blessed?) with personal, regional and national self-doubt - reservation, detachment, melancholy. Almost universally, because the woman in the museum (mid 30s, looked a little like Jill Phillips) had the most genuine and deep smile for all her children (dozens of them) - a smile that only issues from complete sweetness and confidence. What a person to have as a mother. I bet Belgians have very complicated affairs and tortuous, heart-searching marriage breakups.

"But all the same I enjoy these spuddy, craggy, torn-by-conflicting-emotions Flemish faces. When they smile it's like sun in a cold country - so welcome, so sweet. Some fabulous noses. Proposal: A Book of Flemish Noses - coffee-table type, like Roadside Shrines of India."

--A Year with Swollen Appendices, p. 10-11.

Eric Voegelin on the Essence of Christianity, and Our Reaction to It

"The nature of this drive [to pull the Christian eschaton from the divine to the immanent] cannot be discovered by submitting the structure of the fallacy to an even closer analysis. The attention must rather concentrate on what the thinkers achived by their fallacious construction. On this point there is no doubt. They achieved a certainty about the meaning of history, and about their own place in it, which otherwise they would not have had. Certainties, now, are in demand for the purpose of overcoming uncertainties with thier accompaniment of anxiety; and the next question would be: What specific uncertainty was so disturbing that it had to be overcome by the dubious means of fallacious imanentization? One does not have to look far afield for an answer. Uncertainty is the very essence of Christianity. The feeling of security in a "world full of gods" is lost with the gods themselves; when the world is de-divinized, communication with the world-transcendent God is reduced to the tenuous bond of faith, in the sense of Heb. 11:1, as the substance of things hoped for and the proof of things unseen. Ontologically, the subtance of things hoped for is nowhere to be found but in faith itself; and, epitemologically, there is no proof for things unseen but again this very faith. The bond is tenuous, indeed, and it may snap easily. The life of the soul in openness toward God, the waiting, the periods of aridity and dulness, guilt and despondency, contrition and repentance, forsakenness and hope against hope, the silent stirrings of love and grace, trembling on the verge of a certainty which if gained is loss - the very lightness of this fabric may prove too heavy a burden for men who lust for massively possessive experience. The danger of a breakdown of faith to a socially relevant degree, now, will increase in the measure inwhich Christianity is a worldly success, that is, it will grow when Christianity penetrates a civilizational area thoroughly, supported by institutional pressure, and when, at the same time, it undergoes an internal process of spiritualization, of a more complete realization of its essence. The more people are drawn or pressured into the Christian orbit, the greater will be the number among them who do not have the spiritual stamina for the heroic adventure of the soul that is Christianity; and the likeliness of a fall from faith will increase when civilizational progress of education, literacy, and intellectual debate will bring the full seriousness of Christianity to the understanding of ever more individuals. Both of these processes characterized the high Middle Ages. The historical detail is not the present concern; it will be sufficient to refer summarily to the growing town societies with their intense spiritual culture as the primary centers from which the danger radiated into Western society at large."

- The New Science of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952, p. 132-133.
(Image rambunctiously bobbed from http://www.thoughtsongod.com/?p=6008)

Update: 8CHRSAOK

Dear readers, you have spoken! and I owe an apology to both of you. I was mistaken: the New York DMV does allow eight-character license plates for a personalized Empire State plate. The type of plate I referenced is different from the one in the picture. My error lay in believing that personal license plates were all the same, but obviously not.

Apologies also to Mr. Sorkin, Mr. Murdoch, and Ms. Maddow are also in order. Especially to Ms. Maddow: gravely have I insulted thee by lumping you together with Murdoch!

Yes, the post was about getting facts straight, so the irony weighs heavily. I try to teach my students to be accurate in their research, and believe it or not, I try to live up to that myself. But even Homer nods, and I'm nowhere near Homer's stature. Live and learn.

More importantly, though, truth in research presupposes honesty. Fact-checking is just a special case of that; necessary retractions are another. And so I want to reiterate that. Correct me where I'm wrong.

The original topic in the 2008 post had to do with photojournalistic fraud - photoshopping pictures that are supposedly factual - which is not merely a lapse in the fact-checking but a deliberate breach of trust in the media/audience relation. What's so insidious about it, it seems to me, is that it takes advantage of two beliefs: the first one being that "seeing is believing" and the second being "publication = true".

Maybe you're thinking, "Oh come on, don't be so naive. Wake up and pay attention: there are plenty of sharks out there, ready to put one over on you." I'm aware of that. But it doesn't excuse the shysters' conduct. Everyone makes mistakes, that's bad but unavoidable; but not everyone commits fraud, which is really bad and definitely avoidable.

The Virtues of Spinning the Pic

I've posted before about how an increase in the plasticity of the media results in a corresponding decrease in trust of the media. When things like this find their way into books and TV news, it lends temporary credibility to the particular hosts; however, they are followed by a lasting credibility gap in their general domains (read: the media). When you get burned, you'll run from any flame.

But I also said I'd post about the potential benefits of this sort of thing. Here goes.

Basically, the media seem to be teaching the public to discern fakes to a finer degree - thanks to the combination of increased accessibility of information on the one hand, and the media's own lack of use on the other hand. If journalists will not police themselves or each other, it's up to us to play "spot the phony." Which the snarky Internet generation is only too glad to do. By supplying fake pictures, then, the media are potentially educating us in critical thinking and observation - but only inadvertently.

(Now watch, Rupert Murdoch or Rachel Maddow will take this up and use it to spin their errors to their own advantage.)

2LNG2BEREAL

A recent ripple in the news media and blogosphere concerns some material published in the latest book by Andrew Ross Sorkin, and also on his website. A picture appears to show the vanity plate that was spotted in Greenwich, CT. The plates read "2BG2FAIL". On a Porsche. Owned by a banker.

Sounds too good to be true - it would be like them, wouldn't it? But a sharp-eyed reader of The Blue Marble pointed out that the New York DMV allows personalized plates to be no more than six characters long. The alleged vanity plate has eight characters; in other words, it must have been photoshopped. Yet another case of journalists presenting fake evidence. It's things like this that make it unsurprising that folks today are so jaded.

Journalists are people too, I know. But this sort of thing is so politically charged, the lack of attention is inexcusable. The resentment against bankers (which I can't help sharing) runs so high that things like this only feed the fire. Truth would be a better fuel.

The Case of the Case in Point

If there's one thing that's misunderstood about philosophy, it's the thought-experiments. Some are good, some are bad; how do you tell the difference? I want to try and articulate that here, because it can spell the difference between a genuine conversation and a mere bull session. Seems to me that real problems reflect reality (pace Rorty), and their significance is directly proportionate to the amount of discussion they attract. Paradoxes are great examples of philosophical problems, and I do have a pet theory about them. But that's another post. Anyway...

Philosophers sometimes get ridiculed for their examples and thought-experiments - just implausible, its said, implausible or downright silly. There couldn't be any connection to reality, right?

Truth truly is stranger than fiction. Case in point: during my ethics course Monday, we were covering Rawls. In chapter 7 of A Theory of Justice, Rawls distinguishes between the unjust, the bad, and the evil. He cites the example of a person who pursues excessive wealth, pointing out the difference between the unjust man, the bad man, and the evil man (TJ 439). An unjust man commits an act that is unfair to other folks, though the motive would be considered legitimate if kept within limits - say, acquiring money for security. He would be bad if the action was unjust but pursued for its own sake; he enjoyed the mastery of money, for example. Again, that motive would be regarded as legitimate if restrained. He would be evil if he deliberately set out to fleece people because it was unjust to do so; if he enjoyed the unjust act, he'd be evil.

Some of the students asked for another example to clarify the point. "Sure," I said, "consider the case of a person pursuing excessive sex - interpret that any place you wish, it doesn't matter." They considered this to be silly. How could you be regarded as unjust, bad or evil for pursuing excessive sex? Simple: when the libido of one partner outstrips that of the other, and they simply act on it, it is unjust. Depending on the motive, the action could be judged bad or evil. If it were excessively violent, the same principle applies.

By chance a friend of mine posted a news item on Facebook about a British couple that was banned from having sex on account of the excessive noise. The woman appealed the case, and lost. In Rawls's language, their lovemaking was unjust in the sense that they were disturbing the peace. Had it been a party, or a football game, the end result would be the same: too loud.

Unjust indeed. I am so vindicated.

You see, my example was pretty tame as philosophical examples go. There is the brain in a vat, which is a variation on the theme of Descartes's evil genius and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Such problems pose the question of epistemology - how do you know what's real? - and metaphysics - what is the really real? There's the whole zombie philosophy thing, which has to do with identifying consciousness.

And then you have the medieval philosophers. They came up with some doozies, but we ridicule them because we misunderstand them. For instance, "Did Christ carry a purse or not?" This was an economic question: the Mendicant Order of monks complained about the discrepancy between the poverty of Jesus, their ideal, and the growing wealth of the Church. They had serious intent behind them. Questions about angels - such as whether they were created in beatitude or not - have a great deal to say about rational creatures such as ourselves.

The take-home lesson: don't knock something until you understand what it's really about.

(By the way, the "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is of disputed origin, but it seems only to have become well known because of its use in ridiculing the medievals. Not surprisingly, the only folks citing this question use it lampoon the medievals - without once considering whether there might actually be a real reason for posing such apparently silly questions.)

Now this brings out at least three things:

1. Generally speaking, we don't get to exercise our imagination enough. We could all use the exercise.
2. When an otherwise sane-looking person poses an otherwise ludicrous question in a philosophical debate, there's probably (or, should I say hopefully) good reasons behind their doing so.
3. When considering theoretical questions, ludicrous questions can prove to be remarkably concise ways of taking the inquiry to its extreme - and that's where we really learn something.

The problem this brings out is: how do you know when it's a real philosophical problem, as opposed to a BS question? There seems to be a palpable difference between questions such as

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?

and

What if your tail chased you?

Triumph the insult comic dog - bon jovi
Uploaded by AC310DC. - Watch funny animal videos.

Badly needed comic relief intermezzo

Well, if you're talking with the guy who poses the puzzler, and the reason isn't apparent, ask. If you're reading a text and find said conundrum, look for the rationale in the text itself. Usually it's right there. And if it isn't? Time to hit the library. Do some research, find out everything you can about said person and their circumstances; if they did not write about this themselves, chances are somebody else did. And if that turns up dry? I mean, really turns up with nothing to show for it dry? Then it's time you did some digging into the world of the author. There may well be notions they assume the reader will have; that's not unusual, since folks usually and mainly write for an audience of their own time.

Once you get an explanation, consider the ideas being challenged. Philosophers love to enjoy doubting the most ordinary-looking things. It may be BS, but then again, it may present a genuine problem. How to tell the difference? My reflex answer is basically, you learn by experience. That is, if it kicks up a living doubt in you, you'll be concerned and set out to find an answer. Sometimes the problem can be settled quickly - say, with some detail that was forgotten when the question originally came up. Or it may niggle at you for days, or even months. The greater the irritation of doubt, the more significant the problem relative to our current state of mind.

If a problem seems genuine, a good way of double-checking this is to talk it over with someone. It's happened that I mulled over some difficulty for days, and then it vanished when I brought it up with a friend. Putting the question out in public threw it into a different light, and I discovered that I had simply ignored some basic fact or other; once that was obvious, the doubt went up in smoke *poof*. Then again, a genuine problem will rarely fail to get somebody's attention. Maybe not always immediately, but when it finds an audience that will take it seriously, the problem will show itself to be a window on some avenue of thought that hasn't been covered yet.

How Scientific Can Philosophy Be? or, Scientific Progress Really Does Go Boink On Occasion

This was originally going to be a comment; it only seemed to be fair to talk directly to someone when giving feedback. But since the site wouldn't let me post it (no idea why)...here it comes.

A study done recently claims that people tend not to assume an objective standard in morality. The writers of the study argue that, contrary to the view of many philosophers, most normal people have a fairly relativistic view of ethics. The conclusion isn't what I have a beef with; it's the method of arriving at that conclusion that irks me.

The experiment is as follows. Subjects were asked to imagine two people who are asked to evaluate a situation involving killing. One of these hypothetical people is a college student, the other is (a) also a college student, (b) from an Amazonian culture, or (c) a cruel extraterrestrial race. In this imaginary scenario, one person thinks the act is morally permissible, the other thinks it's morally wrong. The subjects were then asked whether the hypothetical evaluators would agree or disagree in terms of their moral judgment.

Depending on how closely related the two speculative people are, the subjects responded variously. In the case of (a) two college students from the same campus, they were imagined to agree. In (b) a college student and an Amazon, they were imagined to be less in agreement. In the case of (c), a college student and Evil ET, the imagined level of agreement was even lower.

In other words, a few college students in philosophy courses believe that between two individuals, the level of agreement is inversely proportional to the closeness of the similarity of those two individuals. The greater the difference between cultures, the greater the difference of agreement on ethical issues.

I'm afraid the experiment seems quite flawed. Leaving aside the more general problem of the extent to which statistics should determine how we actually think about ethical questions (doesn't every logic textbook consider the argumentum ad populum to be a fallacy? Har-har); leaving aside the even more serious problem of the extent that those numbers should influence how we ought to think about such problems, there are serious difficulties with the experiment presented here.

Basically, the actual sample is not representative - of anything, let alone of "ordinary folks." All the participants were students taking philosophy courses at one college. Hardly the average Joe. And it was a small sample at that: only 223. Let's put that into perspective. In 2006-7 alone there were 11,969 philosophy BAs awarded. This comes from a total number of 1,524,092 BAs awarded in that year. (Figures taken from the National Center for Educational Statistics.) The study doesn't specify whether all the subjects were philosophy majors, but for the sake of perspective and generosity, let's assume they are. And because we're feeling extra generous today, let's assume that all the undergrads completed their studies.

In other words, the sample consisted of 1.45 x 10^-4 of the total undergrad population. This out of an estimated general population of 301.6 million. Assuming the number didn't rise between then and now, this means the sample would only account for less than 2% of the philosophy undergrad population, which itself constitutes less than 1% of the total undergrad population. In the US. (The Census Bureau's estimate for 2007 can be found here; world population figures taken from the Population Reference Bureau.)

That means the study yields a sample of 7.4 x 10^-7 of the US population, or 3.38 x10^-8 of the world's population - in a snapshot of the world's history. Representative it ain't.

Now I confess to knowing little about what experimental philosophy is up to. But if it's trying to be more scientific about philosophy by collecting data, it has to be more scientific in its data collection than is presented here. If a physicist published such dismally designed research, she'd be laughed out of court. Philosophers have been criticized for their "unscientific armchair theorizing." Experimental philosophy is attempting to use scientific methods of gathering information. Put simply, it's doubly important for philosophers to do the work right: to curry favor with scientists and the broader community that esteems natural science so highly. Take a tip from them - get bigger, more representative samples.

Ode to Turkish Coffee

Today's post is half-and-half: one part serious, the other not so much. I'm not sure myself how seriously it should be taken, so - sensitive or snobbish? delicate or dorky? You be the judge. (Oh, and it'll morph like a Wikipedia entry, so mind the timestamp when you cite me for your term paper.)

I want to make a case for the supremacy of Turkish coffee; I'll do this by way of analysis of the idea of civilization. If there ever was a pretentious-sounding word, it's "civilized." With that one word (or its negation) you can piss on anything you want, verbally speaking:

"He doesn't wash his hands? How uncivilized."

"Oh, you can't eat with utensils - use your fingers, like civilized people."

I'm no sociologist, but it seems to me that civilization is marked by at least two things: gratuitous objects and exercise of self-control. And I want to say that it's not merely a matter of one or the other, but the instances of both occurring in an object - something you lovingly devote a fair amount of effort to, even though it serves no purpose beyond its own existence. When, say, you start playing with the decor just because you can, that strikes me as one of those things: there's no reason to move the furniture around except to stave off boredom. But see? you can afford to be bored by the decor.

Let me take coffee as one of those indexes of civilization. If I'm right about all this, the highest form would be Turkish coffee.

Think about it: you don't need coffee to begin with, but there it is, waiting for you to cradle in your hands. Doesn't that feel nice? There's no nutritional value in coffee; we got along just fine without it. So right there we've got something totally useless. "But I need it to stay awake!" you protest. Fine, have a Red Bull then. Mmmm, cough syrup with a kick. And you can chug it.

Too much Red Bull?

We like fast. (How else can you justify the fast food feed bag, even as a joke?) Now you can run by a Starbucks for a triple-shot skim-milk cappuccino - wet or dry - or you can go in some drive-thru joint and grab a paper cuppa. And it's all fast. But a Turkish coffee can't be made fast. You could easily automate it, but you can't speed it up much: its essence is precisely the process of slowly heating up the brew, stopping just short of a full boil - three times. To make good Turkish coffee, you have to be patient.

And even when you get it in your hands, you have to be patient. First you wait - some more - to let the fine coffee silt settle. Then when you do drink the coffee, you can't just swill it down: it's one sip at a time. At best you can hasten slowly. But why would anyone want to hurry down a cup of this deep, rich, gratuitous drink?

This sort of patience is an exercise in delayed gratification - or, put another way, self-control. Little kids think that way: more is better, so a lot more must be a lot better. Faster is better here, so it must be better everywhere, and the faster the better.

Self-control seems generally to be considered the path to quality. Ask any artist or athlete, they'll tell you it takes a lot of work and discipline to make it. You've heard it all before: "Talent will only take you so far; to go that extra mile, you gotta work."

Have I learned this valuable lesson? Not fully, I have to confess; there are plenty of times I've gone for the quick-and-easy way out. I need more practice. Hmmm. Think I'll have me another Turkish coffee. It's good practice.

(Images perilously purloined from http://www.flickr.com/photos/blhphotography/501306828/ and http://www.troys-drums.com/archive/2006_10_01_troys-drums.htm)

Will Pay to Work for Free

Un-friggin-believable this is, if true.

According to mediabistro.com, Room to Grow is celebrating its 10th anniversary at Christie's in NYC. Among the festivities: internships at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone to be auctioned off. In other words, you can buy your way into an unpaid temporary position.

Just for fun - OK, and to procrastinate a little - I did some snooping. Room to Grow is indeed having their wing-ding at Christie's, and indeed there is an auction. But what they're auctioning isn't disclosed on the website. If it turns out to be true, though, that's a bit troublesome to me.

It wouldn't be the first time: in May the Associated Press reported that a man got an internship at GQ Magazine for his son. How? By paying more than $30,000 - on EBay.

Unless this is common practice, I take this as a bad sign. And if it is common practice, it seems like a pretty iffy one. My understanding was always that internships (and paid jobs) were landed on the basis of merit, not moolah. Readers, I'm appealing to both of you to enlighten me on this point.

In Memoriam: Aimee Alcarez Cowan (1975-2008)

I was blessed to know her in my first two years at TMC. I heard how she did right, teaching at Tufts - she must've been a good professor. Today she passed away. A bright little light has gone out, but I was lucky enough to see. I was lucky enough to be her friend. My prayers go out to her family and friends, but so do my memories. We've all been blessed to know her.



Brian Eno and Harold Budd, "Late October"

Awakenings

I just realized something. In 1988 I was a god-damn no-good dope-smokin' tie-dye wearing long-haired starry-eyed hippie freak.

Well, twenty years later I don't smoke - anything. I don't wear tie-dyes anymore, and my hair's not so long.

So I guess I look different.

Do I regret any of it? Am I ashamed?

Not on your fuckin' life.